Cassandra
Wilson, Diana Krall, Jane Monheit, Karrin Allyson, Rene Marie -- there's
no shortage of talented female jazz vocalists who record for prominent
labels these days. What makes singer-songwriter and pianist Patricia Barber
stand out from the pack so swiftly and vividly on her new CD, "Verse,"
is a love of language, in all its marvelously pliable forms.

Verbal
cunning is the hallmark of this release, Barber's first collection devoted
entirely to original music. Her passion for the poet's tools of allusion,
metaphor, imagery and teeming wordplay, while often expressed in hushed
tones, is unmistakable and disarming, amusing and evocative. Here's
just a small sample of her lighthearted touch, from "Lost in This
Love," wherein Barber uses a wash of rapid queries to conjure the
vertiginous sensation of someone falling head over heels: "Where
is the bee in the sting? / When did the Earth lose circumference? /
When did the map lose relief? / Where is the salt in the tear of my
eye?"

In
some ways "Verse" is a throwback to the pop reign of Cole
Porter and his ilk, when sophisticated lyrics were in fashion -- even
the CD's title appears to allude to the pre-rock custom of composing
an out-of-tempo verse to slyly establish a mood. Though her lyrics can
seem unabashedly highbrow at times, referencing everyone from Baudelaire
to David Hockney, more often Barber comes up with something that scans
smart and wry. Or, in the case of "I Could Eat Your Words,"
a sort of postmodern update of the pop standard "Teach Me Tonight,"
something smart and seductive: "Psychologically speaking if the
student can teach / The teacher can learn / Let's leave the thinking
to me."

Barber's
lyrics also suggest the influence of more contemporary artists, from
jazz lyricists Jon Hendricks, Mose Allison and Dave Frishberg to pop
tunesmiths Tom Waits and Joni Mitchell. It's hard to imagine any of
these composers -- or most of their fans, for that matter -- finding
much fault with the level of song craft Barber displays throughout "Verse."
There's even an Allison-inspired composition, the acerbic "You
Gotta Go Home," which bluntly tallies an ex-lover's shortcomings:
"A poet's thing for drama / The charm of the insane / You've taken
all my money, now just get on the plane," Barber admonishes. "You
gotta go home."

On
yet another level, "Verse" is a product of its times, influenced
by the atmospheric shadings, rhythmic displacements, odd time signatures
and, occasionally, tart dissonances of cutting-edge jazz. So deftly
orchestrated are the small-combo arrangements that it's worth listening
to the album through at least once as you fix on the way trumpeter Dave
Douglas, guitarist Neal Alger, drummer Joey Baron and their compatriots
colorfully augment Barber's piano musings.

Will
"Verse" receive the airplay it deserves and allow Barber to
move, like Wilson, Krall and Monheit before her, from the club scene
to larger venues? Probably not. For all its popular antecedents, its
ties to the Great American Songbook and the ensuing wave of whimsical,
bop-inspired wordplay, Barber's take on jazz has a distinctly literary
quality -- not the sort of thing that tends to hold large crowds in
thrall.

And
yet it seems even less likely that "Verse" will fail to charm
its target audience and then some: listeners open to highly inventive
forms of jazz expression.